The short version
Upgrading to Windows 11 fixed it.
That sounds a little too simple, but after trying the usual repair commands and getting nowhere, the in-place upgrade ended up resolving every symptom I had run into.
What happened
I originally turned Windows Update back on because I wanted to download the official Minecraft Launcher. It had been disabled for a long time, and after updating, the machine went straight into an endless blue-screen loop.
After checking the mini dump files, I disabled Hyper-V and uninstalled Primo Cache. That at least got Windows booting again, but a new problem appeared: Windows 10 started throwing a file system error, specifically -2144926975 — shown as Windows 10 file system error (-2144926975).
The system was usable, but a lot of things were clearly broken:
- The screenshot tool opened with
shift+win+s, but it could no longer take screenshots properly. - All Start menu icons were blank. The folder containing the Start menu shortcuts itself was fine, so the shortcuts were not missing.
- Hyper-V could not create or manage virtual switches normally, and virtual machines would not start properly.
- Opening files became unreliable; the same file system error could randomly appear and prevent a file from opening.
- Device Manager kept showing an unknown device that would appear and disappear from time to time.
Repair attempts that did not work for me
These are the fixes I tried before giving up on repairing the existing Windows 10 installation. They did not solve my case, but they are still worth trying because this kind of error does not always have the same cause.
First, I tried re-registering the built-in Windows apps:
Get-AppXPackage | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
Then I ran the common DISM and SFC repair commands that often appear in Microsoft support answers. To make repeated runs easier, I chained them into one line with semicolons:
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth;Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth;DISM /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoreHealth;sfc /SCANNOW
I also checked the system drive for disk problems:
chkdsk c: /f
None of these fixed the file system error in my situation.
At that point, the realistic options were reinstalling Windows or using “Reset this PC.” Reinstalling would have meant setting everything up again, which was exactly what I wanted to avoid. Then I realized there was another route: upgrade the system to Windows 11.
The upgrade process went smoothly, and after it finished, the earlier problems were gone: the screenshot tool worked again, the Start menu icons returned to normal, Hyper-V behaved properly, files opened normally, and the strange unknown device issue disappeared.
What I learned from it
The biggest lesson is to keep regular system backups. DiskGenius, Dism++, or even Windows restore points are all better than having no fallback at all. Personally, I would prefer the first two options. Without a usable backup, a serious system problem can leave you with very few choices besides resetting, reinstalling, or upgrading.
One thing that did help a lot was having a USB drive prepared with Ventoy. I had Windows images and a PE system on it, and it made dealing with the blue-screen stage much easier. That is a habit worth keeping.